INTERN (A SHORT STORY)
I won’t lie; the HR department of the company my father got for my internship is filled with mad people. My ‘Oga’, Mr Sunday and his second in command, Mrs Agbeje, are constantly arguing, even in front of staff members, and I always seem to be somehow caught in the crossfires.
In barely one month of my internship here, they have done more damage to my mental health than the workload and Lagos traffic combined. I hear the other staff gossip about how two adults would come to work and fight all day like infants. I even heard that the head office had tried to transfer them from here, but none wants to leave for the other. This kind of stubbornness beats me.
You can imagine my surprise when I walked in on these two doing the unthinkable in the office last week.
I had just finished this self-help book that said something like: to increase productivity, resume early and close later than your colleagues. so, I stayed behind at work after the other staff had fled home for the weekend.
The window blinds were drawn, but it didn’t occur to me as I entered the office without thinking. There they were on the photocopying machine; shirt dishevelled, gown raised, belt loosened, and trousers drooped.
I can’t even describe the terror with which I used to shut the door and rush towards my laptop, begging it to shut down as quickly as it could.
I was halfway to the exit — a thousand thoughts running through my mind when I heard Mrs Agbeje’s voice behind me ordering me to stop.
I turned back, trembling, fearing to look into their faces, but Mr Sunday was nowhere to be found.
Just her.
She made me sit as my shirt was soaked with sweat. I could tell she had tried to arrange herself — but she didn’t do a very good job. Her hair looked a mess.
With a cold look on her face, she sat opposite me before making the most preposterous offer a 21-year-old intern had ever heard.
“Sex for silence”, as she called it.
Words can’t even describe the disgust I felt as she continued to placate me to see reason.
Anyways, that was Friday, today is Monday, and I’m on my way to work as if nothing happened.
Cos, nothing happened or did it?
Well… let’s just say it doesn’t take much to buy my silence.
